


Tin Ear

by linguamortua



Category: The Terror (TV 2018)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Bad Decisions, Carnivale (The Terror), Heartbreak, Hook-Up, M/M, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-27
Updated: 2020-08-27
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:09:06
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,005
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130931
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/linguamortua/pseuds/linguamortua
Summary: ‘You did not get lead poisoning. Nobody’s had lead poisoning since, like, the eighteen hundreds.’
Relationships: Captain Francis Crozier/Commander James Fitzjames
Comments: 22
Kudos: 62
Collections: @terror_exe Flash Fest





	Tin Ear

**Author's Note:**

> It is a party.

That, Francis thinks sourly, is already pushing it. It is a Thursday night, a work night, and he is a grown man at a party. He is at the party because Tom Jopson thinks he needs to get out more, and stop moping over Sophia Cracroft. He is at the party because he has a friend who cares about him. The whole thing is intolerable.

The music is atrocious, the booze is terrible and, worse, it’s little Freddie Des Voeux’s bash so Francis has to be polite and talk to him at least once. Freddie has half the queers in the town here as well as a few from the next town over.

‘Couldn’t we have just gone to see a film?’ Francis asks Tom.

‘No,’ Tom tells him, gently but firmly. ‘Honestly, Francis, you can’t just disappear into fiction. You’ve got to get out and meet people.’

‘People are terrible,’ Francis says. ‘Everyone is terrible except you, and Sophia, and the nice lady at the barber’s who does my beard so well.’

‘Yes, and Sophia’s moving to Canada to study bears, and the barber shop is relocating across town, so where does _that_ leave you?’ Tom’s serious little face looks at him from across a glass of something peachy and fruity. Francis, who is currently feeling neither peachy nor fruity, rather worries about Tom sometimes. He should make friends his own age. Nice, regular friends in their thirties. There is something psychologically wrong with Tom Jopson that he is so invested in fixing Francis.

Someone in the next room is bleating away in an affected drawl. Some Eton-Oxbridge boy, Francis thinks miserably. He shuffles closer to the door to listen in, so that he can more effectively craft a punishing argument against the man later in the shower.

‘I signed up because how do you _not_ sign up to a trip to the Arctic? One has to live life, you know, and what frontiers are left for us nowadays? And then the company contracted the ghastliest catering you can imagine. Most of our food was contaminated. So there I am, on the deck of a ship, wrapped in Goretex and some kind of parka that about forty geese were plucked pornographically bare for, hallucinating _vividly_ from the lead poisoning—’

‘You did not get lead poisoning. Nobody’s had lead poisoning since, like, the eighteen hundreds.’

‘Excuse me, Jim, were you there? You were not. Hallucinating _vividly_ from the lead poisoning, totally incapable of sustaining an erection, for the first time in my life since puberty, I’ll have you know, and—’

‘Who the hell is that?’ Francis asks Tom. He takes a peep around the door but can only see the man’s back: he’s tall, wearing tan shoes and burgundy chinos and a very fitted dress shirt.

Tom follows Francis’ gaze. ‘Oh, that’s Fitzy. He’s Freddie’s second or third or removed cousin, somehow. Freddie’s very proud of the association. Apparently there’s blue blood on that side. They send their boys off to the Army and the Air Force, it’s all very butch.’

‘ _That man_ is in the British Armed Forces?’ Francis says incredulously.

‘No, I think he did PPE at Oxford, actually. He’s a lawyer now.’

‘It would appear that I’m going to take him home,’ says Francis, taking a quick look around the kitchen door again.

‘You shouldn’t,’ Tom tells him. ‘He’s awful. And he’s too young for you.’

‘Exactly.’

‘You haven’t even seen his face,’ says Tom.

Francis swirls his mixed drink around and then tosses it back, down the hatch. ‘Can I have another one of those?’ he asks. ‘I think I’m going to need it.’

‘Francis…’ Tom begins, but he mixes the drink and hands it over. Francis tries to drink it without tasting it.

‘I’m meeting people,’ he says firmly to Tom, and then lifts his chest and walks into the other room. Francis’ time in the Navy has given him the ability to part a sea of people through posture and projection, and he uses that skill now. Fitzy (Francis resolves in advance not to call him that during sex) seems to sense his arrival from the movement in the crowd, and turns.

'Oh, hullo,' he says. 'You're new. I'm Fitzy.'

'Francis Crozier,' Francis says, sticking out his hand and letting himself sound as Irish as he is.

'Are you one of Freddie's?'

'God, I hope not.'

'Oh, look at that, we have something in common already. Who are you here with?'

‘A friend.’ Francis looks back towards the kitchen, where Tom is unapologetically surveilling them from around the door jamb. ‘Tom Jopson.’

‘Tommy’s a sweet boy,’ says Fitzy carelessly. Hearing him say that makes Francis realise suddenly that he and Fitzy aren’t nearly as far apart in age as he’d thought. Fitzy’s got good skin, good hair, a good body, so he carries it well. Still, he’s probably mid-way between Francis himself and Tom. Say, a lean and well-manicured forty.

Everyone at this party is, on some level, here to get laid. So Francis doesn’t feel at all bad for giving Fitzy an unsubtle once-over and asking, ‘Are you staying long, then?’

‘Rather depends on the company. I’m open to wherever the night takes me.’

‘Might take us out of here,’ suggests Francis.

‘I’d love to have you over, darling,’ Fitzy says archly, ‘but I’m having my second bathroom done so I’m staying with a pal presently. The noise, the dust, you know.’

‘By amazing coincidence, I have a flat with a double bed,’ Francis tells him. ‘There’s only one bathroom but I assure you it's all mod cons.’

‘All right,’ says Fitzy. He gives Francis a little smile that makes his face dimple up into two long, curious lines around his mouth. ‘And on the way there, I can tell you about the time I got shot in the inner thigh. I'll show you the scar, if you like, it's about the size of a—’

‘Terrific,’ says Francis, hating him. ‘I’ll call a cab.’

**Author's Note:**

> Hello, I have written three modern Terror AUs about dramatic London queens! If you liked this one, the others are [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130796) and [here](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26130865).


End file.
